Abstract: This dissertation intends by contextual analysis to examine a Southern textile community and through its literature--formal and informal, and written before, during, and after the 1929 Lora Mill strike--to show how the stories of this community construct a "figured world" in which identities were formed and lives were made possible through the genres and language practices of different social groups in Gaston County. It argues that each discourse--that of the mill barons, the mill workers, and the communist labor organizers--developed primarily along lines of money and social class, and shows how each discourse defines itself and is subsequently defined, silenced, and/or given voice by the others. It studies the genres of each written discourse (histories, newspapers, dramatic presentations, songs, and other studies) from a power standpoint that each genre maintains this particular social context.